Krista D. Ball's Blog, page 19

What are your favourite kinds of characters?

My favourite kind of character to write is one that twists traditional rolls and stereotypes. I like to change the genders around (sometimes, even in the same character as what happens to Dancing Cat), change out the religions, insert religions, toss the cliches on their head.

I believe that literature has the power to challenge tradition. There was a time that reading was considered dangerous, especially for women. Only a select few controlled literacy and those wielded the power. By reading ...

I passed the Bechdel and Smurfette Tests!

SF author John Scalzi blogged a couple of weeks ago about the Bechdel Test of his favourite SF films. Some people in the comments seemed surprised; I sure wasn't. I've complained about the lack of strong, independent females in SF&F since, well, the onset of literacy in my life.Don't know what these tests are?Bechdel Test:
it includes at least two women
who have at least one conversation
about something other than a man or men.

The Smurfette Principle is the tendency to have only one female...

My Brain, the Movie Reel

When I am working on a chapter or a short story, I replay the scene over in my mind. It plays out like a movie. Sometimes, I even hear the background music.

For me, it helps to visualize the scenes and body motions, listen to the dialogue, figure out where people are standing. As a reader, I have a movie playing as I read the words. So, I need to make sure that the movie makes sense.

Do you have a movie playing in your mind when you read? Does it ever match the cover art or any future movies...

Harvest Moon Teaser

Here is a little taste of Harvest Moon, after Dancing Cat has been turned into a man by an angry ancestor. Bearclaw doesn't know that she's actually a woman! I hope you enjoy!

She twisted off a well-cooked wing and gnawed at it, oil dripping down her chin.

Bearclaw released a short bark of laughter. "If I knew you were this hungry, I would have gotten us deer."

She stopped eating, horrified at her display. Dancing Cat couldn't put her chewed wing back, but she couldn't keep eating, either. So...

Zombie Sightings

I'm going to stop shopping at Home Depot. The place is littered with sexist zombies who pose as staff. Obviously, these aren't really staff members since sexist doesn't exist in the world amongst humans, right?

I was trying to find a door stopper. Since the kids have already punctured the drywall, I knew the exact size that I need. There are several options, so I'm standing there comparing the sizes, shapes, and how it attached to the wall. An orange smock-wearing male zombie along with one...

Reviews of Blogs and People I Follow (Part 3)

For Part 3 of marketing resources for authors, I'm reviewing the people I follow.

The Savvy Book Marketer (Dana Lynn Smith) I follow Dana's newsletter and her twitter account. There is a fair bit of overlap between the twitter, the emails, and the newsletter. However, the information is usually informative, so I don't mind the overlap.

The marketing information is almost exclusively designed with a non-fiction, print market in mind. However, there are a number of tips and hints that are...

Marketing for Writers – Book Reviews Part 2

More book reviews! See yesterday's post for the previous list.

12 Strategies for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) by Jeff Finkelstein

FREE!

On Twitter, folks were chatting about how important this is for authors. Apparently, we all needed to stop what we were doing, download this book from Smashwords and read it.

So I did. And I gotta tell you, I'm even more confused. I feel like an idiot admitting this, but I seriously don't get it. Perhaps this really is important. Lots of folks keep saying it ...

Marketing for Writers – Book Reviews (Part 1)

I get asked a lot of questions about marketing, from what I've done personally (not much, but more each day) to what books I've read (lots and less each day). So here is the first installment of reviews. I'll also cover some websites and people to follow on twitter later this week.

1001 Ways to Market Your Books by John Kremer ( 2006 edition)

I'm firmly convinced that it's these kind of books that make fiction writers break down into sobbing puddles over "marketing" and "branding." This book is ...

Book review: Evolve

Vampires have evolved…Meet the twenty-first century vampire!

Edited by: Nancy Kilpatrick, Published by: Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, 2010

There was a time I liked vampires. Incubus, Succubus, Spike. Then it came. You know what I'm talking about. At times, I feared that I would go stark raving mad if I had to hear about or read another story with either "sparkles" or "Sookie" in it.

I bought Evolve several months ago at a vendor's table here in town. The cover art is what struck m...

5 Tips to Spark Your Creativity

Writers often have too many ideas floating around in their heads. I have a note book filled with story and novel ideas. If I wrote 1500 words a day, it would take me 5 years just to write the first drafts of those projects. But I suffer from lack of creativity at times.

I have a story idea but I can't think of ways to make the plot work. I'm tired of the same ol' ways of doing things. I want something new and fresh, but I can't think of anything. That's when creativity sparks are needed. I've ...